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In: Anthology

Mosque at Hadejia – Ridwan Badamasi

The new carpets in the mosque at

Hadejia are lush; my hands sink

into their soft hairs. Around the back,

there are folds that will trip you, roadblocks

in the path of foot traffic. The air

is filled with the smell of perfumes and

the pine-orange fibers of the new carpets

and the muddy streets outside and the rains.

Light and dark cross fingers across the expanse,

and for a moment, as we all descend into

a sujud, I imagine the lattice crisscrossing

across our backs as daylight splintering

into shards. After, I look for God coiled

at the end of a tasbih, the thick bile

of the symptoms that ail me curling

up my throat. I try to rethread the stitches

that hold up my body, to treat my body as

a wound, to tongue through metaphors

for prayer. What I understand of God is

His silence. The Imam, who yesterday

prayed for a man who’d descended

into the wrappings of a straw mat

says the story of man is flux and fire.